Foreboding and Widespread Nightmare
by Nazo the Kitsune
Summary: Three nightmares on the same night, each involving Yakumo Yukari. Coincidence? Kirisame Marisa, ordinary magician, thinks not. Seeing as Reimu's busy somewhere dealing with a giant catfish, why shouldn't Marisa take on the case herself? It shouldn't be any harder than any other incident she's had to deal with, but perhaps not everything is quite what it seems to be...
1. Flandre's Nightmare

**Welcome to Scarlet Devil Mansion. Over here, you'll see the eternally young mistress of the household, Remilia Scarlet. In the basement, you'll see a feverishly working magician and a devil. At the gate, you'll see a Chinese woman. Her name is Hong Meiling, and she's probably asleep. Looking back to Remilia's side, you'll see Izayoi Sakuya, serving her mistress as ever. But oh, what's this? Yet another soul wanders these magically enlarged halls, alone, perhaps even neglected. The younger sister of the devil, Flandre Scarlet.**

Flandre's skin prickled with unease as she made her way through the deserted halls. Remilia was out and Sakuya was getting some well deserved rest. Meiling was probably slacking off somewhere. The only person Flandre could think of to talk to was Patchouli, who was known to stay up into the latest hours of the night clinging to pages laden with knowledge.

Flandre rubbed her cold arms, stumbling down the hall, angry with Sakuya for making them so long. She was all but running, tripping on her nightgown, shying away from the one thing most people would assume vampires would accept as a friend: Darkness. Moonlight streamed in through the windows, but shadows crept along the edges of the glowing silver pools it cast on the floor.

The young vampire heaved a sigh of relief as the basement door came into sight. She threw the door open and fearfully descended the nearly pitch-black staircase, rushing for the light at the bottom. The library. The smell of musty pages hit her like a wall as she stepped into the light.

"Patchy?" Flandre called quietly, hesitantly, a tiny bit afraid to disturb the librarian.

"Hmm? Oh, yes Flan?" Patchouli said, by the sound of her comment just tearing herself from the labyrinth of printed words. Flandre followed her voice, coming to a halt at one of the several tables scattered throughout the aisles of bookshelves. Patchouli sat there quietly, a heavy book in her hands. She removed her glasses and pulled up a chair for Flandre as she approached, seeing as her devil assistant Koakuma had passed out in the only other seat present.

"I had a nightmare," Flandre blurted out as she sat down. Her stomach churned with the memory of what she had seen in her sleep.

"You did?" Patchouli's eyebrows creased with concern, overshadowing the already dark circles under her eyes.

Flandre nodded. "I was really scared."

Patchouli hmmed as if she were contemplating an equation, which was absolutely not what Flandre wanted her to do. Flandre wanted someone to do what Sakuya had done last time the young vampire had a nightmare. Sakuya had fetched her something warm to drink and had insisted she talk about it, had stroked her hair, and had just generally made her feel better. Talking to Patchouli about emotional problems was basically like talking to a scholarly wall. Flandre considered going to wake the maid instead.

Suddenly, Patchouli seamed to remember who it was she was talking to. She perked up, blinking herself out of thought. "Tell me," she said. After a moment, she had an idea about how one should treat a frightened child. She patted her lap as an invitation for Flandre to come.

Flandre breathed a sigh of relief in her mind as she hopped into Patchouli's lap. Flandre closed her eyes and shuddered as she called up the memory of the dream. "I was in the clock tower, when Sakuya pushed me through the clock face. I fell, and the fall was longer than it usually would've been. I couldn't fly. Things kept reaching out at me, but I couldn't see them. They stole all of my wing crystals, one by one. They- the things that stole the crystals, I mean –kept whispering things to me. I can't remember half of what they said, but they kept telling me to fear the dark. Then all of a sudden, this portal thing opened up below me and I fell through."

"Sounds a bit like Yukari," Patchouli interrupted, forgetting momentarily that she was supposed to be playing the role of a concerned maternal figure. "Go on," she said hastily, stroking the back of Flandre's head for good measure.

"Then there was a room. One half was dark, and the other was light. I was afraid of the dark half, because of the voices from earlier, so I went towards the light. But I got ripped in half. Sort of." Flandre's lip quivered and a fat tear spilled over her eyelid. "One half of me got to go to the light side. But the other half, which was entirely vampire, was scared of the light, you know, because it burns. That half went and huddled in the corner. The shadowy part of the room grew hands then and started dragging me towards the dark half, and the voices started again…" Flandre trailed off into sobs.

Patchouli rubbed the young vampire's back distractedly. This didn't sound like any ordinary child's nightmare. In fact, this sounded a bit more like an incident than anything else. Especially because of one detail: Yukari's gap had probably appeared. And Flandre didn't know who Yukari was.

**Miles away, an immortal princess of the moon awakes from her sleep. Her name is Hourisan Kaguya, and she's just had a horrible nightmare. In a magic shop in the middle of the woods, a magician wakes as well. Kirisame Marisa, ordinary magician. And she's just become aware of an incident through her dreams as well.**

**A/N: So this is my first fanfiction! I hope you guys like it. A brief disclaimer even though I don't know why it's necessary: I do not own Touhou Project or its characters: the things just mentioned belong to ZUN. – Nazo the Kitsune**


	2. A Meeting at the Shrine

**On this side of Gensokyo, near the Great Hakurei Barrier, is the slightly broken down, deserted Hakurei Shrine. Oh, wait. The shrine's usual inhabitant, Reimu Hakurei, is away, but another person is within it. It is this shrine and the mysterious visitor inside that Patchouli Knowledge approaches.**

It was a quiet, bright day in Gensokyo, very peaceful in comparison to the night of nightmares before. While Patchouli would not normally have left Scarlet Devil Mansion, this was a situation which required action, and so it was for that reason that she was now walking down the dusty path to Hakurei Shrine. It had been hard to escape the Mansion, seeing as, presumably, Mistress Remilia would not like to see her librarian going to Reimu Hakurei for help. But in the end, Patchouli had decided that she had to go, and it would be best just to give Flandre some made up story to tell everyone in her absence.

Patchouli was not an outdoor person, and she couldn't say that she enjoyed the walk to the Shrine. Despite how annoyed she was, and the fact that asthma was causing her to wheeze, she arrived at the building in good time. She sighed and reached out to knock on the door, wondering quietly why on earth this building still stood. Surely Reimu, as appreciated as she was by the people of Gensokyo, could make some repairs or spruce the place up a bit?

It was not, however, Reimu, who answered the door, much to Patchouli's surprise. "What do you want?" came the voice of Kirisame Marisa, opening the door a few moments later. She made a tired noise that was somewhere between "oh" and "hmph".

Patchouli cleared her throat. "May I come in?" She was inwardly very disgruntled by the appearance of this little thief. Because of the fact that the magician often stole books from her library, the two did not get along well.

"Yeah, sure. I'll make tea, ze," Marisa said as she shuffled back down the hall, probably in the direction of the kitchen.

Patchouli cleared her throat again, stepping inside and closing the door behind her. "Thank you," she said, following the weary magician.

Marisa went around a left turn in the hall and, seconds later, began banging things around. Patchouli entered the quaint little kitchen and sat at the table without waiting to be invited to sit down.

"I came to speak to Reimu Hakurei about a possible incident," Patchouli said, as Marisa continued to bang things about in what was hopefully an attempt to make tea.

"She ain't here," Marisa said. Patchouli was suddenly overcome with the desire to chastise her for poor grammar, but she resisted.

Something then occurred to Patchouli. "If Reimu isn't here, then why are _you _here?"

"Somebody's gotta look after the shrine." Marisa shrugged. She gave up on making tea by hand and muttered some sort of spell, conjuring tea in the two cups she had brought out. She set one cup on the table in front of Patchouli and sat down across from her, leaving a most frightful mess on the counter.

"I see," Patchouli muttered through gritted teeth. "Well, perhaps you could assist me with this, then?"

"Huh? Oh yeah, incident. I could probably help out," Marisa said, stirring her tea with her finger for no obvious reason. Patchouli suddenly realized fully how tired the young witch looked. Marisa was normally quite lively and bright, but now she just looked bored and drawn. She had dark circles beneath her eyes.

Patchouli wondered briefly if this was a good idea after all. Anyways, it was always possible that Flan's nightmare was just coincidental. It was never good to assume, Patchouli decided. "You know Flandre, don't you? Didn't you meet her during your first little invasion of our household?"

"Yeah, I know Flan," said Marisa as though she hadn't heard the last portion of what Patchouli said.

"She had a nightmare last night," Patchouli said, pausing. "About someone she's never met."

"What a coincidence, ze…" Marisa muttered as though she thought no one was listening. "And who would this be?"

"I assume you are familiar with the gap youkai, Yakumo Yukari?"

Marisa slowly put down her cup of tea. "I s'pose you could say that."

"As I said earlier, it's a bit suspicious that Flan would have a nightmare of Yukari as the two have never met," Patchouli pressed.

"You don't think she might've heard about Yukari from somebody in the mansion?" Marisa asked.

"No. I don't think anyone would've told her. And besides, if she knew who Yukari was, don't you think she'd have mentioned her by name?" Patchouli took a sip of tea and sat back a bit as Marisa stewed over this information.

"What exactly did Flandre see? I don't need the whole nightmare, just the part with Yukari," Marisa inquired slowly, frowning in thought.

"The gap, the void, the portal, whatever you want to call it," Patchouli said.

"Now _that _would be some heck of a coincidence," Marisa muttered. "The funny thing is, I dreamt about Yukari's gap last night, too."

Patchouli's eyebrows shot straight up in surprise. She thought for a moment before saying, "I wonder if anyone else has had a dream about Yukari…"

"It's a good question," Marisa said. "I guess I'll take the case. I guess I could start with interviewing Flan…"

**In the hallway, there was a creaking sound, and unknown to the two witches, a youkai stepped back into a gap through space and time, thoroughly enlightened by this latest development.**

**A/N: Am I getting everyone's personalities and stuff right? Am I using "ze" in the right places? Let me know if I'm doing stuff wrong so I can improve this. – Nazo the Kitsune**


End file.
